Elliott Carter, 1908-2012

[Joe Barron]

bobby, Thanks so much for the reminder! I did find the link. Unfortuantely, it requires flash, which I cannot download onto my office computer. And my home computer is too slow. So I guess I'll have to wait. I'm glad to hear it's a successful piece.

Carter's new song cycle, On Conversing with Paradise, on cantos by Ezra Pound, will debut Saturday at the Aldebuurgh Festival. Talk about a golden old age! My middle age isn't this interesting.

And of course, the big question on everyone's mind whenever there's a new premiere is,  "Well, now that that's finished, what else is he working on?"

A few years ago, Carter joked that maybe when he was 100, he would write a sixth string quartet. We should hold him to that. The Pacifica has been so good to him over the years that they deserve the favor.

[bhodges]

Joe, thanks for that Aldeburgh link, and man, I just have to reprint the concert, since the whole thing looks quite fine:

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
with Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble*
Oliver Knussen conductor
Leigh Melrose baritone

Oliver Knussen: Coursing
Helen Grime: New work (world premiere)
Elliott Carter: On Conversing with Paradise (world premiere – Aldeburgh commission)
Stockhausen: Tierkreis (Zodiac) for orchestra*

--Bruce

[bobby quine]

Amazing that Carter is continuing to work--at 100 years old--and turning out excellent work, to boot.

I was lucky to be able to attend the European premiere of his Horn Concerto at the Concertgebouw early last year. You're right, it really is amazing - he's indeed living proof that it's possible to keep a razor sharp intellect going... (or maybe he's just on autopilot and he could probably turn out excellent stuff in his sleep...) 

[karlhenning]

That Horn Concerto is a fun piece;  and it was a musical turning-point for my wife viz. Carter, for whose music she had not at all cared before.

[Joe Barron]

That Horn Concerto is a fun piece;  and it was a musical turning-point for my wife viz. Carter, for whose music she had not at all cared before.

Has she come to like anything else since?

[karlhenning]

Has she come to like anything else since?

Specifically of Carter's, you must mean?  There hasn't been any occasion.  I plan to spring the DVD on the girls at some point, but timing will be everything.

[Joe Barron]

Specifically of Carter's, you must mean? 

Yes.

And what DVD is being sprung on the girls?

[karlhenning]

Labyrinth in Time

[Joe Barron]

Labyrinth in Time

Not the greatest documentary I've seen ...

[karlhenning]

Not the greatest documentary I've seen ...

Well, be fair: not every documentary can be This Is Spinal Tap

[Joe Barron]

Well, be fair: not every documentary can be This Is Spinal Tap

Very true, but still, I could have lived without the intrusive camera work in Labyrinth. How much do we need to see the speeded up traffic on the Hudson, or the East River, or whatever it was. And more context — ie., a narration — would have helped.

[bhodges]

Just got word via Tim Rutherford-Johnson's great blog, The Rambler, that more of Elliott Carter's compositional sketches are now online at the Library of Congress, here.  A few works are incomplete, but they expect them to be finished soon.

--Bruce

[Joe Barron]

Just got word via Tim Rutherford-Johnson's great blog, The Rambler, that more of Elliott Carter's compositional sketches are now online at the Library of Congress, here.  A few works are incomplete, but they expect them to be finished soon.

--Bruce

You beat me to it, Bruce. I was just about to post the link.

[Joe Barron]

An answer to the perennial question, what is Mr. Carter working on now?

From the The Birmingham Post:

In fact, he was just putting the finishing touches to his latest composition, a piece for soprano and chamber ensemble with texts by the poet Marianne Moore, when we shared a conversation from his home in New York's Greenwich Village little more than a week ago.

[bhodges]

Interesting!  Glad to hear of another song cycle, since his are generally very strong.

FYI, slightly off-topic, but on the apartment building across the street from mine, there is a small plaque with Marianne Moore's dates--apparently she lived there for some time. 

--Bruce

[Joe Barron]

Interesting!  Glad to hear of another song cycle, since his are generally very strong.

FYI, slightly off-topic, but on the apartment building across the street from mine, there is a small plaque with Marianne Moore's dates--apparently she lived there for some time. 

--Bruce

Manahattan is truly a village.

[Joe Barron]

Upcoming Carter broadcast on BBC 3, the The Independent:

Carter's new work, 'On Conversing with Paradise', is an 11-minute setting of some fragments of Ezra Pound which express the poet's despair at not having written the perfect poem. Under Oliver Knussen's incisive baton, baritone Leigh Melrose and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group evoked a timelessly simple and savage world which made the Maltings rafters ring. Modal rather than tonal, and grounded in thudding and throbbing percussion, it delineated a view of heaven from hell with unassailable authority. Radio 3's 'Hear and Now' will broadcast these and other Aldeburgh events on July 11 and 18.

Broadcasts are streamed on the BBC 3 webstie and reamin available on line for one week after the broadcast date.

[Joe Barron]

Lovely blog post about Carter's appearance at the Aldeburgh Festival.

He is now a hundred and a half.

[karlhenning]

TTT

[Joe Barron]

TTT

To the top?
Tim Tang test?
Third Tier Toilet?